Peek-a-BOO!!

hehe The title is like The Last 5 Years. ANYWAYS! So I have not posted for 3 weeks, and for that i am sorrrrrrry.

basic summery of two weeks ago 16th-22th:

A close friend of mine kinda did something not so smart and broke a rule and the whole week was just really crappy waiting to see what would happen to him. Our principle was gone so we had to wait all week, a week involving a lot of stress, prayers, piano playing, and a fair share of crying (cuz i am a girl like that). But that week is over and we are moving on with our lives. ^_^

Baisc summery of one week ago 23th-29th:

Um..I CAN'T REMEMBER!! poop. Ummm...well in class we worked on our newest show. It's a comedy about some old guy who is upset about how old people are treated, so he kidnaps a lady and starts a mini revolution. It's kinda ridiculous and pretty funny. I have two rolls: a TV camera guy...well...girl...but guy sounds best with camera guy...yeah.....and a psychologist. The psychologist has lines and i was gonna memorize them in norwegian, but May Brit decided it would be funnier if I said them in english. I don't like the idea too much cuz then it feels like i fail in norwegian. I don't want the kids in my school to think that it was ME that asked to act in norwegian or that i failed at it and she made me speak english cuz i sucked so much. She just for some reason thinks it is funnier...at least that's what she said. So that is a mix of happy and suckie. Yay for getting to act in english! No yay...or whatever...for having to act in english! =P

Um...so May Brit had surgery on her achilles tenon so she has not been able to be in class. So that week we had a sub who was a students and an "environmental worker" at the school before. he was really nice and lots of fun. Besides that...i didn't do too much that week. Just chilled. Kinda recovering from the stress of the week before. Yeah.

Fun events from this past week:

Last weekend was a long weekend, so on Monday i went to Oslo and hung out with Ingrid and Isak. That was pretty fun. I spent the night with Ingrid at her brother's house. He and his wife were both very nice. The next day we met up with the rest of our class and we huuung out in Oslo, went to see a play, and spent the night in a hotel. It was a generally good time. We came back to school on Wednesday. We stopped working on our show for now because of some things in the class. Janne, one of my "environmental workers" had a sister that was very sick from cancer. She passed away just the other day, so she is at home and will not be at school (which is a good thing. She should be with her family). So we started working on something else in class and we might not do our show until after we come back from the missions trip in Mexico.

Few random things that are fuuun:
The other night i saw the Northern Lights. I have seen them before in MN, but not as good as here in norway. They "danced" and turned a bit red. It was pretty darn awesome.
JC
Also a few nights ago i had a dream in NORWEGIAN!! Not all of it. But some! Which is pretty awesome for me. I don't know exactly what that means...if anything. But it's still fun.
A dear friend of my mother's, Marit, came and visited me for a bit. She was my mom's "norwegian mother" when she was here in norway, and i have known her since i was young. So we were talking and i was saying how i was super sad that i could not come back for the reunion next year since it was too expensive for me. Marit told me that she would talk to my mother and that she wanted to help me with that. So now finances are no longer an issue for coming back to norway! Which is like SUPER HAPPY! Now leaving to go back home at the end of the year is not nearly as stressful to me as it was before. ^_^ Such a blessing in my LIFE!! Also, she gave me 500 Kr which is like $100. Awesomeness.

Well yes. That was basically The Last 3 Weeks.

Prayer requests:
Janne and her family.
Augsburg stuff (i didn't mention it, but i applied for Augsburg and for a scholarship, and it's kind hard getting all that organized from far far away)
May Brit and her leg
Getting ready for MEXICO MISSIONS


LOVE YOU ALL!
Fin

After many weeks of non-updates, I am finally updating!

I really should have updated the Sunday I got back, cuz a lot of things happen the last week of school. Finishing up the Christmas Musical, Christmas parties, yummy food, dancing around the Christmas tree, getting ready to leave, all that jazz. But alas, I did not.

Now I am back in Norway. It is very nice to be back. It was suuuper nice to be home as well, but I sure did miss it here. It's pretty funny, i have been asking people what they did over break, and most of them said relaxed, slept, or watched TV. I was busy almost the whole time. Especially the last week. Seeing friends, getting things I needed for Norway, seeing Tom, seeing family, all that craziness. Plus Christmas, my birthday, and new years. It was all lots of fun. Other events like my brother almost dying in a house fire were not so fun. But all is well.

Coming back to norway was a stress. I had only three transfers this time since my first flight was canceled and i was given a direct flight to NYC, which was nice. (ps on my over night on the way home i got to see A Little Night Music and it was AWESOME). But since it was snowing each plane left and landed late. I had to run to each of my connections. Not fun. My jet lag sucks. I hope it goes away fast. But I doubt I will be able to function well tomorrow in class. Pray for me!!


Love love!

FIN

Sooo sorry about not writing a post last week. Nothing too darn exciting happened. I mean, stuff did happened, but I was feeling down most of the week, so I was never too darn excited. But I am better now! ^_^

SO this week we stared the Christmas Musical. The title of the show translated into english is actually "Now We Have Washed The Floor". It is a line from like the most famous norwegian christmas song. But to an american it kinda makes no sense. Pretty funny...well at least I think so.

The Christmas Musical is mainly for children. Which is why the kids loove it. They sing along to the songs and clap and we can just see them jumping and dancing around in their chairs. It's so CUTE to see them. We have had many kindergartens come to see the show. ^_^ I LOVE KIDS! But that's part of whats sad about the musical. We have some kids in the cast and after/between shows I soooo wish I could go talk to them and visit with them, but I am not far enough in my Norwegian skills to do that (kids are really hard to understand). So I watch other people like Erlend play with them and I feel left out. I guess I just have live vicariously though them. yup.



Now lets see...what else happened. UmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmYESTERDAY i made american breakfast for my class. My mother had sent me bisquick pancake mix in the mail as well as some maple syrup, so i decided to make a yummy breakfast for everyone. We had american pancakes, fried eggs, "maple" bacon (we put syrup on the bacon while we fried it), dunn bros coffee, and tropicana orange juice. Oh the way i say American Pancakes is because they eat a different kind of pancake here in Norway. And they eat it for dinner. Not breakfast. And not with maple syrup. I really enjoyed eating American breakfast. I dunno about my class mates, but they told me they liked it. (but who really knows.)

So like i said, last week i was pretty depressed all week. The reason for that is, as some of you might know i really deal with like...confidence issues as far as my friendships go. I know i can be a loud and annoying person at times, so as a result I am kinda in constant fear that i am just annoying the crap out of everyone around me and that the friends i have are just pitty friends that feel bad for me so they hang out. If you think about it, if a person ever asked you if you thought they were annoying or ask if you really were friends, most people would say no you are not annoying and yes we are friends. EVEN if it is not actually true. I myself have been guilty of this. I feel bad to say that i have been friends with people just cuz i feel bad for them. But then that is a whole other debate i feel. Whats worse, being friends with someone just cuz you feel bad for them, or just letting them be all alone? But anyways, I am always paranoid that my friends aren't really my friends, that they are just people that can tolerate me for that moment of time. HOWEVER i do not actually believe that this is true...well i do...but i don't...but i do...but i don't. But the past...well this is the 4th day...i have been trying to be more confident in myself, my personality, and my friendships. I have a habit of assuming peoples thoughts (and they are always negative). So i decided to stop doing that cuz it just gets me down and it's a stupid thing to do. So though out the day i have just been reminded myself over and over and over "be confident be confident be confident". Someone (probably through the grace of God) it has been working. These past few days have been really great. I just hope i can keep it up. But ya know, God created me who i am the way i am, and he loves me and he has sent me here to love others. I need to not be afraid or hide who i am. yeah. so i am pretty sure that whole paragraph was worded very poorly but you get the idea.

On another note, the snow here has been beautiful. I heard that the snow in MN has been pretty crazy (poor metrodome). Here it is not as crazy, but it has been clinging to everyone. I have never seen snow cling to trees and plants quite like this before. It's SO PRETTY!



Welll Amalie's Jul (did i tell you about that norwegian christmas tradition? It's a norwegian TV show that shows one episode every day of advent, and we have been watching it here. It is totally poor quality and ridiculous, but it's tradition. It's cute.) so i better be finishing this up!

LOVE YOU ALL!

Fin

This week had 2 big events. Thanksgiving and a fake roll wedding.

Now you may be thinking, what? Thanksgiving? In norway? IMPOSSIBLE!!

But no my friends. it is not. FOR ALL THINGS ARE POSSIBLE THROUGH HIM WHO GIVES ME STRENGTH. (pretty sure that is not what that verse was referring to but...whatever).

So as i was thinking to myself, "self. thanksgiving is coming up. how are you gonna make all that food? and who will you invite? more importantly...who will you NOT invite?" and that just stressed me out. So i thought maybe it would be worth a try to ask the kitchen if they would want to make it. So November came along and i told them about it and what it was and what food we normally eat. At first they seemed not up for it, but then in the week of thanksgiving they decided to do it! So i found recipes for them for all the dishes they didn't know how to make such as stuffing, pumpkin pie and green bean casserole. On Wednesday they had a few other people and me make the desserts. We made 2 "sheet cake" versions of pumpkin pie, 2 of apple pie, and some people made the jello for the fluff.
The pumpkin pie story:
SOOO norwegians don't really eat pumpkin pie. At all. Does not exist. Sooo anyways, on Wednesday we are in there ready to make pie and they give me the pumpkin they got. It was a sort of canned pumpkin. But not like what we have in america. noooooo it was pickled pumpkin. Like sweet pickles. Nasty smelling chopped up cubes of pickled pumpkin. Gross. And it was not even enough for the recipe. So we soaked it in water and added sugar and tried to make it taste as good as we could. It turned out okay. It tasted fine and you really could only taste the pickled undertones if you knew to look for them. But it didn't taste like normal pumpkin pie. So i will FOR SURE need to get some when i come home for Christmas.



So anyways. Thanksgiving came and i was in the kitchen helping, just to make sure that everything looked and tasted okay (since they have never seen or tasted many of the dishes). We had the works.
Turkey
Stuffing
Green Bean Casserole
Mashed Potatoes
Carrots
Corn
Rolls
Gravy
"Cranberry" Sauce (we didn't use cranberries. we used another berry that they have here that is similar in taste)
Pumpkin Pie
Apple Pie
Fluff



YUMMY!! Most of the people seemed to like it. Some people said it was the best meal so far. I was like HECK YEAH! It was lots and lots of fun. The kitchen was SO WONDERFUL for putting it all together for us. ^_^ YAY!


SOOO the other big event this week was the fake roll wedding. About a month ago we all got an invite to a wedding. On the invite everyone was given a roll to play. For example: one of my friends was a secret agent, and the whole time she was question people suspiciously throughout the night. Other people had bigger rolls and things to do at the wedding. For example: my friend Hans Kristian was the father of the bride. So he had to, ya know, walk her down the isle and give a speech and whatnot. Others had groups to work in. For example: I was apart of a break dancing crew. We were all adopted by missionaries from different countries all around Africa. And we had to perform a dance during the reception. And our mom was there (but we didn't know this until the actual wedding) and she was a super strict Christian who thought that dancing was EVIL. So yeah.
So like lllllaaaasssst week i think.....maybe???...we started this "bachlorette" show thingy bingy bingy bingy. One of the girls in the school was the Bachlorette and there was 5 guys that were all in the competition to try to be with her. There was a ghetto guy, a really competitive weight lifter guy, a male model full of himself guy, a obsessed with reality TV really cheesy guy, and a really rich chauvinistic guy. Each "episode" they had to do something else and one guy was kicked off. On the day of the wedding, there were 2 guys left (the rich guy and the reality TV guy) and she picked the rich guy and the other one ran out of the "church". Then they got married. Like wedding vows, ring, kiss the bride. Everything.

Then after we went and had a dinner. The "environmental workers" served us a fancy meal and there were toasts by the family members and the maid of honor and the best man. Everyone had really funny characters. The best man proposed to the bride during his speech.


Then we had the reception. Many different people performed. There was a gospel choir (of three people), a poem or two, our break dance, a 2 fortune tellers telling them 2 different futures for their wedding, a preggers lady gave birth and superman came to save her, my "mom" kept freaking out over the dancing then showed pictures from Africa, and other fun things like that. Everyone was really into their rolls. Lots of crazy outfits to fit their rolls and people stayed in character pretty much the whole time. kinda. sorta. yeah. It was super fun and pretty crazy.



However an interesting issue came up for me in the midst of this. Like i said, my roll was with a bunch of people who were all from Africa. And they all through it would be a good idea to put on make up to look like a black person. So basically they all wanted to do black face. and i was like NOOOOOO that is racist. And they could not comprehend why i would think that that was racist. There has actually been many situations where there will be something that is considered racist in America, but not in Norway. I think it is because the racist things came from America originating in slavery, and Norway never had slavery. So they don't really get that the racist things are racists. So I refused to do black face, for even though it may not be considered racists for norwegians to do, it is considered racists for an American to do. So i said i was for Egypt. yeah. I was a very interesting issue that i am still very conflicted about. Even teachers could not comprehend why i would consider black face to be a racist thing. Even when i explained the history behind it. It was pretty crazy.



So that was my week. It was fun.

LOVE YOU ALL!

FIN

Again I waited a few days to write my post, so what I did last week is a bit fuzzy. oooops. Well in class we started working on our Christmas Musical. It's cute. Defiantly for kids. So we worked on that in class every day and we will be working on it/performing it until Christmas break.

This weekend was where the adventure was. We had a long weekend (from Thurday after classes were finished until Monday (meaning we had monday off and Tuesday classes started again)). Josefine (a girl from my class) invited me over. But she didn't have a place for me to stay so Erlend offered since his parents have a spare bedroom. But as it turned out I only got to see Josefine on the train there and back and for like an hour or 2 on Sunday. But it was fine. Erlend is a good friend and his family was really nice. His brother Jorund is 16 and super funny. I also met Erlend's best friend and Josefine's brother, Mag (short for Magnus). It was really fun meeting him cuz Erlend and Josefine talk about him a lot. Yeah the name of the place I was most of the time was Stokke. But i also visited Sondefjord and Tonsberg. Good time. It was nice to be in a house and not at a school. yeah.

So yeah I have noticed a few fun things about Christmas traditions that we don't have in America. Here are a few fun ones.
1. Julebrus-translated Christmas Pop. Every region has their own version of Julebrus, and everyone says that the one that is from their home is the best. It made me laugh.
2. Advent Calendars (GONE CRAZY)-not just a little window for everyday. Not just a little window with chocolate in it every day. BUT A PACKAGE EVERY DAY! okay no everyone does it. but i have not heard of anyone in the states having such an intense advent calendar, but many people returned from their homes with little gifts to open for each day of advent. SUPER CUTE! I WANNA TRY!
3. Nissen. Don't actaully know the full story of what Nissen are. They are like the norwegian version of santa, and many norwegians think it is the same. But it is so not. Nissen are like little men...that look santa...but small. It's more like a creature then a man if you will. like a gnome. Each farm...i guess...has a Nisse and they are little mischief makers. so you feed them and they are nice, and if you don't they play pranks on your through out the Christmas season. There are a lot of different stories about stories. Somehow in the mix of stories we get presents in the mix. yeah. so not Santa. at all really. =P They just look like santa.
4. As many of you already know, Norwegians celebrate Christmas Eve more than Christmas Day itself. Some people don't do anything at all on Christmas Day. They are all about the Eve. I personally like both!!


I guess that's enough for now. More later!

LOVE
FIN

So sorry for not writing a post last Sunday. I put it off, then just totally forgot. And i sure can't remember what i did last week either. probably stuff involving acting =P

SO this week was CRAZY! The acting track performed 3 times!
First it was our Fairy Tale projects. Our class got divided into two groups, one did some norwegian fairy tale Per, Paal, Espen Askeladden and my group did Hansel and Gretel, but we changed it so it was Hans and Henning. And i say Hans instead of Hanel cuz norweigans are stupid and don't call stories by their real German names! Stupid. I wrote that just for my friend Hans Kristian. ^_^
It went well and most people said they enjoyed it. I was a bit nervous about acting in Norwegian, especially since we practiced in English, then decided less then a week before that we were gonna make it all norwegian, soooooooo i had like 3 practices in norwegian. But it went okay i guess. It was fun ^_^


not a very exciting picture, but this was most of our set. yup.

Then on Wednesday we were in charge of the service (cuz we have a service every wednesday night and the different classes take turning doing it) so we did two of our clown pieces. That's right, clown. But not scary clown. No creepy make up and weird hair. Just funny clothes and noses. yup. We speak in gibberish so that when we go on missions anybody can "understand" us no matter what language they speak. It's really fun, pretty darn tiring, and the audience laughed, so that's a good thing.


Ain't we just soooo cute!

THEN the final performance was for Hostfest (more info on that in a moment). We performed The Old Shoemaker. The story of an old, poor shoemaker whom the Lord says he will visit, then he helps people and at the end of the day the Lord says he visted him through those people that he served. The whole "do unto other/whatever you did to the least of these you did to me" thing. I am pretty sure the goal of performing it at Hostfest was to make parents feel bad so that they would donate to help people during our missions trips. YAY GUILT TRIPS!

Apparently if you are poor you have dirt all over your face. yup. Well we were both playing kids so i guess it is more acceptable. I WAS A BOY! YAY! =P does that mean i have performed in drag? awesome. HEY! i didn't get any tips! that's crap. hehehehehe

SO hostfest! Directly translated it is FALL PARTY!!! yay! Basically we invited the families of all of the students, plus last years students to come visit for a weekend. On Saturday at 6:30 we had this big presentation where each class did something. The music did a song, we did our shoemaker play, dance did a dance, creative showed stop motion films, disciple got interviewed, and x-sport, sports and snowboard all did a trampoline show together. It was all pretty fun.



suuuuuper coooooool!!!

Then later that night the Dance and Music tracks had this big concert together. it was pretty cool. pretty legit. the dances were probably my favorite part. Not to bash on the music track at all, i just LOVE watching dancers. I mean, I can listen to music any day, and I see people singing all the time (especially here), and it's not every day that you get to see a good dance. ^_^ It was pretty fun. i liked it. I know that everyone worked very hard on it and it was worth their effort.

The stage we have at Toppen is pretty awesome. we set it up in the gym...hall..thing. and They set up this huge thing with lights and craziness. it's pretty darn awesome.

So this post took me hours to write. haha hope you like the pictures.

Better end this now before i start rambling for another 10 min.

LOVE YOU ALL!

FIN

So I totally neglected to write an update last Sunday. But basically, nothing too darn exciting happen. The only thing that happened was me getting my lip pierced. I have wanted to get my lip pierced for about 5 years now, but many things kept me from getting one. The two biggest ones were my fear of needles, and theatre. In order to take my piercing out for long enough to perform in a show, i would need to have many months of heal time without any theatre. And that's just gross. And my fear of needles is pretty bad. like really bad. liiike thinking about needles right now makes me shiver. yuck. BUT after much thinking, i did it! It HURT. But the pain went away, and now i have a spiffy hole in my lip! YAY!

This past week my class went to Oslo from Monday until Thursday night. That was a lot of fun. It was so nice to be in a bigger city. We did lots of fun things; saw 4 stage performances, toured 2 theaters, went to 3 acting schools, took a method acting class, went to the iben museum, and just hung around Oslo. We saw the musical Next to Normal. I was super excited to see it. Next to Normal is my favorite musical at the moment (which changes from moment to moment, unlike my favorite musical of all time). It was in nynorsk, so i couldn't understand anything, but i had the music memorized, so I heard the words in my head. It was super good. I loved it.

Over all, it was a good trip. It was so nice to be just with my class. Something about bonding together as crazy theater people. pretty great.

Then this weekend we had 2 events for the community. On Saturday we had the Red Carpet Party. Basically it's a big party that we put on for the teens in the area to celebrate Halloween. Everyone dressed up as a celebrity or something like that and we put on this big party with music, wall climbing, foods, foam pit jumping, random cars to take picture with...weird...video games and yeah. It was pretty fun. Everyone looked great.

Then on Sunday we had Hallovenn, which is a play on words, since venn in norwegian is friend. It was a Halloween party for families, mainly kids. Again we dressed up, no scary outfits, and had this hug party with sooo many things to do. I got to jump out of a window, play with remote control cars, jump on one of those big inflatable castles, climb on a bunch of recycling bins and dress up like a fairy, all before the kids were even there! ^_^ I was in charge of the big jumping castle thing with two other friends. it was really hard working with kids, since they don't know english and i still am not that good in norwegian. It was sad cuz i LOVE kids but i couldn't really have fun with them. sad day. The whole thing was quite tiring, but very fun. The kids loved it. I think they said we ha like 400 kids...or maybe guests...either way...a lot.

All around it was an eventful week. Lots of fun things. It's nice to just hang with friends and strengthen bonds. I love the people here. I hope to get to know them more and more, but again, the language thing can get in the way. Perhaps i need to be trying harder. yeah. probably. anyways....i'm done rambling now.

FIN